


Alastor

by Honicomb



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 06:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15382881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honicomb/pseuds/Honicomb
Summary: Alastor's death.





	Alastor

The grey street of Little Whinging is damp with rain puddles this evening. The luminescent water collects in black pools between the blocks of sidewalk, serving as many small mirrors to reflect the wide and ghostly faces of the few stars that have pierced through the canopy of clouds. Drips and speckles of dirty water clasp their wet little hands onto dragging robe tails, wetting the fabrics of ripped jeans and robes until they are merely dark and muddy paintings. The pulsating beads of humidity do well to create a steady beat against the tops of the heads of the fourteen wizards who all but belong to the home which they enter. Rapping against uncovered scalps, spilling between the tendrils of Tonks’ purple hair, and dancing through the forests of six Weasleys’ auburn manes, the dusk is claimed by suffocating water and the frantic lights that shiver between the skies like wild spirits.

Moody’s flask is passed from hand to hand with a slosh, some fingers shaking more than others.

Not five minutes past, the room was cacophonous with a nervous chatter and thinly-veiled bouts of challenging words, no doubt most heavily coming from the Weasley twins, to the amusement of the more charismatic attendees of this perilous meeting. Following particularly intimidating verbal corrections from both Alastor and the promising  witch Hermione Granger, the place had regained its air of unease as the potion began to perform the purpose for which it had been conceived. 

Transformations shift over the faces of those who swallow the concoction,  stretching and pressing limbs, shifting color, twisting indentions into places where lily-white skin and lightning scars do not belong. For a time, the room is filled only with sounds of discomfort; stress. To the direct left and right, two fixtures of light shudder and buckle beneath the tremulous boom of the coughing skies. What amusement that fills the room is forced, and what expressions that cross the eyes of the Potters are subdued and fractious.

The rough, deep murmur of Hagrid grinding his teeth. Kingsley Shacklebolt grazes his lips with his calloused thumb. Arthur Weasley leans his entire upper body on his forearms to watch the rain gather its wild clout. Black water wets the drowning window sills and paints the air with a violent noise and out from a leather bag in the middle of the  linoleum floor spill a dozen red shirts and smart bluejeans onto the ground, ready to be thoroughly looted.

Remus overlooks it all with a still face and watchful eyes, one of his arms crossed at the elbow, holding his ribcage as if a wet organ might come bursting out of a scar beneath his fingers. His jaw is slack and his lips are closed. Alastor notices upon swiveling his eye that Remus’ gaze looks filled to its capacity with worry and a poisonous anxiety that shows most visibly when the lamps in the room flicker on and off.

When the flask is passed back to Alastor, it has been drained of its weight and its surface has been heated by nervous palms.  

Alastor’s stick holds his weight as he stalks about the very front of the room, his gnarled mouth clamped shut, his eye whisking about the location and giving its striped pink walls an exhaustive evaluation. His false leg lifts and falls with dull thuds and his shoulders move with less agility than they once had many years ago.

T he shift and brush of fabrics. The scrape of cold zippers on metal teeth. Numerous rattling belts click and ding, being pulled through holes, being frustratedly fumbled with by slippery fingertips, and as the skies interrupt the town, the air in the room seems, for some reason or another, to have dropped to the floor and shattered.

Ron, rubbing his knuckles to his  forehead, says crossly, “Bloody hell. Givin’ me a headache, all this rubbish.” The ‘rubbish’ was tension, but Ron, meeting Hermione’s eyes, thinks it unwise to refer to it as such and look truth in the face.

“Suffering from a bit of a fear of rain, are we, Ickle Ronniekins?” The smile of one of the Potters splits into a very Fred-like grin that is all teeth and bespectacled eyes, but then as the last of the shirts are being adjusted and flattened onto Polyjuiced bodies, a  _ whack! _ is heard against the window above the front door and Remus’s left foot staggers backward and the eyes of all wizards follow Alastor’s scowl to the ceiling.

The hair on the top of Arthur’s hand is standing stiff, oscillating in the flashing rivulets of water on the other side of the glass, and at once, his left hand slips from the windowsill and his skin flushes as red as his hair and a good-sized bit of the wood from the sill is on the grey floral print of the floor and again, the  _ damn lights _ -

“Feelin’ alright there, Arthur?” Hagrid’s great voice booms, and it is a rough undertone of scratchy benevolence beneath the white noise of the howling water.

The eldest Weasley’s shoulders are sagged forward with invisible weight and his chest is palpitating as if any semblance of  fresh air in the room is evading his lungs. Though Arthur is unharmed and in relatively good care, Remus’ hand is on his shoulder and his eyes are as dark and ponderous as the faded scars that mar the bridge of his nose. “Alastor, the plan,” Remus says impatiently. 

Alastor’s eye swivels and then clacks like machinery in its twisted socket, the fuzzy image binding on the occupants of the room and their nervous shifting. His plan rings in the ears and minds of those listening, his voice a low and murmured hum beneath the noise of the billowing rain outside the paper-thin walls, though his voice is sharp and composed of bitten-off words. Alastor doesn’t bother over-explaining; he can see that the cold is crawling inside of the room and wrapping itself around the many wizards, skimming up robes and prickling at exposed skin. 

Someone’s hand covers the knob and the rain has stormed against it from the outside, pounding it, making it rattle a low and sudden hum and then the door is opening and the depth of the blackness on the other side of it is only overpowered by the shattering, crisp roils of water that deepen the cracks in the road of Little Whinging. 

Broomsticks and scraps of metal soar into the sky and break the mat of clouds with slashes of spectacles and open mouths and all at once, though so painfully slow,skin is being devoured by cold air and brisk wind, rain chipping at flesh and bitten, gnawed cheeks. A number of wards sprint jaggedly from the points of frosty wands, and all around them, the skies of night and bitter lightning are harmless to their soggy skin and heavy jackets. 

The spells make the light grow worse and cause the cold wind to become steeper and more painful. Where mountains of thunder would barrel at them with wild roars and crackles and coughs, a circle of force surrounds them all, making the raindrops skip and flutter, so the lightning instead bites against the force field like the teeth of a rabid hound before, like ricocheting flames, doubling onto the path it has already ventured.    
  
Alastor is the first to spot the Death Eaters and Kingsley the second, but what’s worse is that it isn’t Moody’s special eye that does the doing. It is the cold. The heartlessness; the icy fire of determination and the brisk darkness that evil invariably drags behind it. Like a corpse, the evil is black. Like the shine of a dying eye, the evil is distant. It perceives all.   
  
Remus’ spine shows every sign of itself through his thick windbreaker, spiking like the horns of dragon as the professor hunches and unsheathes his wand, the Harry that clings to his shoulders threatening to slip from the back of the broom, his arm is extended so far behind him. This time when the streak of blue magic comes rolling through the rapid shower of rain, it finds its mark on the side of  the student’s head. It is by picking up on Remus’ slip-up through the cacophonous blizzard of cracks and whips that the rest of the group catches on that the one who gets struck is George Weasley. 

Flashes of light ripple and douse the matted grey clouds in fire, thickening the world and muting the sound and collecting, gathering around the mass of speeding wizards in a calamitous circle of thunder and almost  _ noiselessly,  _ they are - 

_ he is _ -

slipping through the clouds, skidding on the edges of thunder strikes and feeling the electricity scald his skin, his body clambering, chasing after the windy tops of trees quicker than he thinks anyone’s eyes could observe even if they tried their very hardest and - 

a pain worse than that which could be inflicted by magic, a - 

pain that only lasts, builds for an instant and then - 

dies and it’s -

gone and who will tell Minerva when she inevitably demands to know where he’s -

gone?

It’s Remus who delivers the news, and he is the first to cast his eyes over the ripped, torn, chunky flesh and mangled bones of Alastor Moody’s remains. Mud speckles the veteran's mouth and face. His magic eye is planted somewhere distant; somewhere bloody. 

And his skin, always the warmest part of Alastor, is decrepit and cold.


End file.
